A recurring difficulty for school director Vitalis is finding the rent every month. A few months ago the children once again arrived at school (the blue painted one seen in earlier posts) to find the door padlocked by the landlord who demanded money. The result? They managed to pay him off then found another building, which, while unsuitable, gave them a temporary place to call home and continue lessons.

Unfortunately, a major problem with this mud building is the infestation of termites, seen in the picture below, which eat their way through everything – the floor, desks, what little equipment they have.

While we were planning the build of the David Cox designed brick building, it dawned on everyone that we quickly needed to move the children away from the termites and into some sort of structure on the beautiful, newly purchased land. It is quite common for locals to plant or graze on unused land, so it seemed important to build something, however temporary, to show the school’s future plans, and give the school a permanent home.

Everybody concerned came up with a compromise to build 4 timber framed, tin clad classrooms, some shelters from the sun and rain, and 3 latrines. Just need to dig some holes in the ground and find some trees.

11 thoughts on “Temporary Beauty”

What will be the cost of the materials be? Will the labour be free? Seems the issue to resolve ( amongst a plethora of others) is provision of the basic shelter afforded by walls with double roof skin umbrella with internal subdivision. Unless you have secured the holy grail of a generous philanthropic sponsor, it looks like continued self-help will be necessary using seed funding for those materials. Given the frustrating circumstances overall, fantastic progress has been made to date.

Hi Andy. Yes, your basic assessment/suggestion is our plan also. We got most of the supporting posts in the ground today (pictures to follow). Will create the frame for the walls tomorrow. Now that we have begun a (small) build everybody is infused with the headiness of progress. Just can’t agree what colours to paint the school.

Drumming is rainfall for termites
Posted by Julie Damkjær on March 29, 2016
When the bugs you want to catch are smaller than a fingernail’s length and live underground, how on earth do you get to them? Harvesting termites looks at first like one of the trickier challenges in entomophagy.

Elaborate traps are built on top of the termite mound with clay mud; little gutters and pipes divert the termites into a trap. To persuade them out from safety, smoke is blown into the mound, but only after hours of rhythmic drumming on the ground. Apparently the termites mistake the drumming for rainfall, and are tempted to the surface in search of water.

You can watch the whole process in some of the footage shot for BUGS the film, including how to eat the raw termites when they emerge. As Scottish chef Ben Reade discovers, they key is not to eat the wings…